Simple and cheap: Scientists find new way to grow stem cells without embryos

In a significant breakthrough, scientists have found a cheap and easy way to produce highly sought-after embryonic-like stem cells without terminating any embryos. The ground-breaking discovery could usher in a new era in stem cell biology.

Although the research was carried out on laboratory mice,
scientists believe that the same approach should also work on
human cells, researchers said.

"If it works in man, this could be the game changer that
ultimately makes a wide range of cell therapies available using
the patient's own cells as starting material - the age of
personalized medicine would have finally arrived," said
Chris Mason, professor of regenerative medicine at University
College London.

Since the discovery of human embryonic stem cells, scientists
have had high hopes for their use in treating a wider variety of
diseases because they are "pluripotent," or, in other words, are
able develop into many different cell types.

Stem cells are widely seen as a repair kit for the body.

So far, there have been two ways of producing those pluripotent
stem cells--harvesting cells from embryos in the first days after
fertilization or inducing the changes by introducing new genes
into a cell, the so-called "iPS" technology.

But research on human embryonic stem cells has generated much
public ethical debate as it has attracted interest from both
scientists and potential patients. While it was seen as a major
breakthrough and a hope to cure many diseases, pro-life
campaigners have argued that destroying an embryo means
destroying a potential life.

The latest study, published in the journal Nature, has showed there could be a third
way, "the most simple, lowest-cost and quickest method" and one
that is also ethically sound.

Pluripotent stem cells can be simply reprogrammed from a
patient’s own mature, adult cells, as scientists from the RIKEN
Center for Developmental Biology in Japan and Brigham and Women's
Hospital and Harvard Medical School in the United States found
out.

"It may not be necessary to create an embryo to acquire
embryonic stem cells. Our research findings demonstrate that
creation of an autologous pluripotent stem cell – a stem cell
from an individual that has the potential to be used for a
therapeutic purpose – without an embryo, is possible,”
Charles Vacanti, senior author of the study, said.

Researchers have called the phenomenon STAP cells,
stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency.

To trigger the transformation researchers take adult cells and
simply let them multiply. In the next stage, they subject cells
to external stress, "almost to the point of death” , by
exposing them to various hostile environments, for instance, acid
or low oxygen.

To researchers’ surprise, within a period of only a few days the
STAP cells survived and recovered from the stressful stimulus by
naturally reverting into a state that is equivalent to an
embryonic stem cell. Those cells were then able re-differentiate
and mature into any type of cell and grow into any type of tissue
- skin, bone, organs - depending on the environment into which
they were placed, like embryonic stem cells.

Cells from skin, muscle, fat and other tissue of newborn mice
appeared to go through the same change.

"It's very simple to do. I think you could do this actually
in a college lab,” Vacanti said.

Scientists say that the new technique could pave ways to tackling
conditions like cancer, heart disease, Parkinson's and stroke.

"If we can work out the mechanisms by which differentiation
states are maintained and lost, it could open up a wide range of
possibilities for new research and applications using living
cells," said Haruko Obokata, who lead the work at RIKEN.

But Obokata stressed that it is still premature to compare it to
iPS technology in terms of potential medical uses.

Besides a possible new way to grow tissue for treating illnesses,
Vacanti also acknowledged that the technique, if proven to work
with human cells, could be potentially used for cloning humans.